I saw it in every round in the 2011 playoffs.
Yes injuries never gave him a true fair shot after that season, but you kinda saw the same thing over and over again. The answer to low scoring losses by him was to simply play better defense, nevermind trying to play better offense. You'll lose to the more talented offenses every time if this your solution.
Sent from the mod station in Nome, Alaska.
I don't know...the Bulls actually had good offenses under Thibs. Usually top 10 if my memory serves me correctly. Hard to have a good offense when you don't have good offensive players. We never had enough ball handlers/play makers and our shooters were mostly specialists. He had a defensive team, that was the identity and he stuck with it. Can't make chicken salad with chicken shit. Like I said, there were times where you failed to adjust and let his stubbornness get in the way but at the end of the day, when we were healthy, we advanced to the ECF and lost to the better team with a young Rose who didn't have the IQ to make decisions quick enough against Miami's defense against him. Once he went down, we literally had no legit offensive options. Lu and Boozer isn't going to cut it. The whole team was built around Rose being the MVP and a stifling team defense led by Noah, Asik, Deng, and Brewer. Rose went down, we never replaced Asik, Brewer left etc etc...
Was Thibs perfect? No. I'm sure he'd even admit (maybe) he could have done some things better. But after Rose went down, he wasn't given a very good hand to work with. In 2010 we definitely overachieved. No doubt about it. We probably should have beat Philly when Rose tore his ACL, but it's hard to say how much emotion of Derrick going down effected the team. Long story short, Thibs is still a top 5 coach in the league despite his flaws.
